Agreed - they made you an offer and you accepted. You even went as far as asking them to check. They have no rights here that I am aware of.

They will be looking to get you back into your current position as quickly as possible whilst paying as little as they can. Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it is a bad thing. The reason is that when the other driver is at fault their insurance company has to do their best to ensure that you are put back in teh condition you were in before the accident. That not only means things like having your vehicle repaired satisfactorily but it also means cover of any loss during the time it takes you to get your vehicle back. So if you found yourself without a vehicle and unable to get to work it would be reasonable for you to hire one and to charge the 3rd party's insurance company for it as part of your loss. I'm suprised that Aviva isn't providing one to you and charging the 3rd party's insurance company for it. This is a great way to speed up your repairs, as every day the mess you around costs them more money.

They're trying to check the validity of your claim to make sure you are not defrauding them. A little bit of an inconvenience for genuine claimers, but a big problem for fraudsters that cannot back up their claim. Just answer the questions honestly and you'll be fine.

Do you have a courtesy car?

Insurers are not allowed to pre-date cover. They could not have renewed it even if they wanted to because of the gap. Hope that helps.

Carpets are more often going to be contents than buildings. Grey area tho - worth checking to be sure.

Don't just take your car to another garage to have the work done there instead. If Aviva can prove that they could have had the same work done for cheaper elsewhere (like the existing garage putting it right for free) then you will be liable for the difference. I think your best bet is to give the existing garage this one chance to correct their mistakes. If it is still not satisfactory then go to Aviva and state that you are not happy with that garage as they have got it wrong on two occasions, and request that another garage do the work instead.

Haha, that is interesting from LV - and a good idea at that. Let us know how you get on!

What exactly did they say here? When a claim is made it is up to you and the claims company to come to a mutually agreeable deal. They are not allowed to dictate the price to you, so don't let them steamroller over you. The good news here is that it is a non-fault claim. It may also mean that your insurance company is trying to be a tricky bastard. Welcome to the murky world of accident assistance... First I will tell you what you should do to get your claim paid. Secondly I will tell you your insurance company want you to do this. 1) What you should do Go to ebay, autotrader and all those other type of websites and search for your vehicle. try to get the model as exactly right to what you had, with similar mileage and age. Get a screenprint of all of these vehicles (ctrl+ PrtSC), paste into mspaint and save it. This will give you an indication of how much cash you would need to buy a replacement car of the same sort that you lost. Find an average price and accept that this will be what you can get for your vehicle. If the price is higher (let's say it was £1500 for argument's sake as I have no idea) then you should contact the claims department, state that you reject their offer, and state that based on teh evidence that you have gathered that a price of £1500 would be acceptable. State you have looked at the market price and you are happy to share this with them. Jump through the hoops they put in front of you, and remember if you do send them print outs to send it recorded signed for. If they reject your offer then ask them why. They at this point need to state why they believe that your car is worth less when the evidence you have provided disagrees. Ask them to provide you with this evidence. Looking up the value in Glass' Guide is not good enough - they don't set the market price they are only a guide. Chances are at this point they will offer you something closer to what you are asking for. It is up to you how long you stick to your guns. However if there is no agreement to be reached then the situation will end going to a court to decide. Remember to take your evidence (and keep collecting more evidence). 2) Why they want you to do this. The above is not really possible if the accident was your fault, because you only get a limited courtesy car length (if at all) so you are under pressure to settle because you need a new vehicle. However if it is the 3rd party's fault then they have to ensure that you suffer no loss whatsoever. This includes transport costs. So you could get to keep your courtesy car for a long time. Accident Management companies know this. They know that whilst they are sure that you are 0% liable that they have the 3rd party's insurers by the short and curlies. The 3rd party company want to settle up as quickly as possible, because those courtesy cars are not free to give out. They will have to hire them from a supplier, who might charge, ohhh let's say £17 per day on a bulk contract. But what if instead of using their car you used your own ca, and it cost you £25 per day? Well, they'd have to cover it. This is what accident management companies do. They hire cars themselves at £17 per day, lend it to you, and then charge the 3rd party insurer £25 per day and bag the profit themselves. In one way it's good cos it forces the 3rd party insurer to get a move on, but of course this is an industry wide thing, and the cost of these ambulance chasers on the industry makes everybody's premiums go up. Anything an accident management company can do, an insurance company can do better. Your insurer will give you one of their courtesy cars, at the cost of £17 per day and will be charging the 3rd party insurer £25 per day. It's called a courtesy car lead, and forms an important part of generating extra revenue for the insurance company. the longer they do this the more money they get from it. So it is in their interest to slow the process down. Now not saying that this is what they are doing, but a deliberately low and unacceptable claim which is put on hold is a very effective way of drawing this process out.

They can but it' a lot murkier. The technical rules for Flood is that an insurer is not allowed to decline for an event that is less frequent than 1 in 75 years if the area has been reinforced for flood, or plans / work have been put in place to improve it in the next 5 years. In practice what tends to happen is that an insurer will not decline any business that was previously acceptable if the risk hasn't changed. You have to have a very good reason to do that. In fact I've recently been working on changing our flood decline areas, and we decided that any existing customer that is in our new decline area would not be declined. Typically an insurer may be able to get away with this if another insurer will pick it up. In broker based business you may not even see it as the broker will place you elsewhere. And if you cannot get cover anywhere else, well then the incumbent insurer will be hard pressed to not provide you cover. Like I said above - worth a fight if you are put in a right mess, but the alternate quote you have (given the extra claim) I think is pretty good and personally would just give them my business instead.

No I am saying that it is illegal to offer a price and then not honour it - hence my question. If you had read this a little more carefully you would see that the OP got a quote online at £x (which assumed an annual quote). When they called up to confirm they must have stated that they wanted to pay monthly, else the insurer would have asked for the full payment. This is the point at which the insurer should state that the premium has changed - ie that a discount has been withdrawn. This is why I asked if they confirmed the price. If they did not tell you that the premium would change and allowed you to incept the policy thinking it was still at the previous price and then tried to increase the premium later, then yes I'm pretty sure that is illegal. Do you think it is legal?

Hang on - when you agreed to take out the cover using an installment method, had the person you were talking to confirmed the price? Might be worth making a complaint and asking for a copy of the call log. Sounds like they are being very sneaky here, and I don't think that it is legal.

Not sure this is true.

Hi simplelifelover, I understand that you are angry at the recent events, and that it can seem unfair. However there are a few points that you have raised which show a lack of understanding about how the insurance industry works. As operational staff (and even many underwriters) can be poor in explaining the reasoning, I'd like to clarify a few of your misconceptions. This will hopefully allow you to understand what is going on a bit better and make an informed choice about what you want to do. Firstly think carefully before you go to the effort of moving investments. You do not have insurance with Santander - like most big banks they act as a broker for another insurance company (and take a commission from it). The underwriting acceptance rules and the underwriter you spoke to (if you do get your insurance through Santander) will be Equity Red Star. Santander will have no decision making or authority in this matter. Not saying that you shouldn't move if you really are that upset with Santander, just saying that this decision has very little to do with their company other than their decision to use Equity Red Star as their underwriting company. I think it's pretty clear why you have bought insurance - and the fact is that by purchasing insurance you have been saved from £8,800 of repairs in the last 3 years. Insurance is not worked out as a pot of money that you pay into and then claim from at a point in the future. It is based on the individual risk of something occurring each year - ie it is predictive and not historic. Think of it as gambling in reverse, because that is absolutely what it is. Now the reason why premiums rise (or insurance is declined or terms are imposed) after a claim is made is because past claims are a good indicator of future performance. You are not being punished for a past claim (that would be silly as another insurance company that didn't have to pay your old claim out would undercut the insurer trying to punish you and steal the business), you are being assessed as being a higher risk because the trend is that people who have recently claimed will claim again. Just like everything else you are rated on for insurance (your age, gender, occupation, car you drive or number of bedrooms in your house), it is based on statistics of the performance of people similar to yourselves. Additionally £8,800 / 14 years of payments means that if your insurance premium average over that time was less than £628 you're still ahead (i.e. the amount of premium you have paid is less than the repair bills you would have paid). With a recent claim and the loss of your Years Claims Free, a 25% premium increase is actually not that bad an increase. 3 year's no claims discounts would probably be around 35%-40% in itself, with the claim probably adding 10%-20%. I know you are angry at Santander for declining to invite you for renewal, but don't let your anger cloud your judgement. You knew your insurance would go up after making a claim. Now that all said - I do think you have a valid point regarding your home business use. The rule of thumb for insurance companies is that when deciding to accept business you are not allowed to decline existing business when the material facts have not changed. And these material facts must be relevant to the reason for the decline. So for example if you moved house to an area with a high chance of flood your insurer would be entitled not to offer a renewal because of the risk of flood. That's decline reason (flood risk area) is relevant to the materal fact change (moved house). Discontinuing cover based on something that they had previously had no trouble covering isn't necessarily against the rules, but it's on damned shaky ground - especially when you have recently had a claim and it's looking likely they are trying to shed the business. This is something that I believe you do have a case for with the FOS. The first step is to make an official complaint (if you have not done so). It may be hard but don't write something like you have in your OP here. Keep it very factually based and to the point. So state that you are complaining because you are being declined for cover due to a reason that was previously acceptable, and that your circumstances regarding this has not changed, and you want to know the reasons for it. Once they provide a reason complain about this demanding that you be accepted, and after they say no reply asking them if this is their final offer. At this point you can go to the FOS to complain. However be wary - this whole process could take a long time, and the FOS can only rule on acceptance and not on price. You may find that after all of this you are accepted, but that the premium will be higher than the quote you have received from Lloyds. It does sound like they are taking the ****, and I'm the sort that would probably fight for the sake of it - but be warned that you could be wasting a lot of your own time for no gain at all. Oh and try not to be incensed that your broker mainly deals with ex-convicts. These sort of specialised brokers are just generally very good at finding insurance products that have different underwriting rules (be it criminal convictions, high risk areas, unusual circumstances, previous claims etc). Good luck, and let us know how you get on.

Also check your own existing insurance policy, as you may be covered to drive other cars with 3rd party cover. As Mossy said you should not need this (as demonstrators will have fleet cover in place to allow for test drives), but if you really are worried in case they are dodgy then you might be able to cover yourself with that.

Items are only insurable at their material cost. No value is places to sentimentality. Therefore do not value the item based on it being personal to you / having your name engraved on it (think of it as having no engraving or someone else's name).

If you need a vehicle whilst taking the fight to them then consider going to an accident management company. They will assess your incident, and if they think that you will win (ie that it is not your fault) then they will provide you with a hire car until the claim is settled. This works because the car you are given will be charged to the 3rd party' insurance company (and they make a markup on this). It will also convince the 3rd party's insurer to get a move on as they seek to lower their claims costs. Of course this all depends on you having identified the other car and that you are talking to their insurance company.

If you didn't receive any letters about your insurance renewing then you have a good chance of getting the insurance cancelled from inception and all money returned to you. Providing details of the alternative insurance that you arranged in place of the renewal you were not expecting would demonstrate that you were not expecting the existing insurance to renew (and also satisfy Kwik Fit that they will not be liable for a claim). However they are right about insurances all going up - motor insurance increased by an average of around 20% last year.

Then you call their bluff, force them to go to court and see if they will commit perjury (a criminal offence that carries a prison term). To be honest I would do this with the driver of the other vehicle as well - it's a hell of a risk to take. The other driver has NOTHING to gain between 100% liability and 50% liability, only his insurance company does. In fact it may not even be the other driver claiming this, it may just be their insurer trying it on.

If she (or her insurer) does not accept liability then you can take it to court for a judge to decide. He will side with the police report. Then the TP's insurer will be stuck with 100% liability AND a lot of legal costs. This is why I am sure that they will accept liability once they discover there is a police report (whatever the TP may or may not do). Your solicitor may want it to go to court as then she/he will be able to charge for it. You need to get your solicitor to contact the TP insurer and state that you have a police report (fax a copy) and that you expect to have the case dealt with immediately. If your solicitor refues to do this then fire her/him and contact the TP insurer yourself. (You have no idea how much money can be made from delaying your case)

If the TP has admitted liability then they will be dealing with the injuries and repairs etc. But your current insurer won't be happy as they will want to give you a hire car and charge the TP insurer for it and make a profit themselves. If in doubt always go through your own insurer first.

Are you sure that this phone call is from the third party's insurers? If so then they are trying to be pro-active about reducing their claims costs. One of the biigest leakages in money from the insurance industry is in accident management companies. So here's the scenario: I'm an insurer (Wulfyn's Dodgy Insurance) and one of my policy holders smacks into you. Now I am liable for all losses incurred to you by my policyholder. As you don't have a car anymore then that is a loss, so I would have to reimburse you any costs of you getting transport. One way you can get transport is by hiring a car. I would then have to pay for the cost of that car hire. If I give you a car to use then it might only cost me something like £150-£200 a day because I can set up an agreement with a car hire company to get cheap rates for high volume. If you however go to another company to hire a car then I would have to pay whatever rates they charge (prob £300 a day). If you go through an accident management company then they may well stick an extra £100 a day admin fee on top of that. So by getting to you first I can provide you with a hire car but at a much lower cost to myself. This lowers my overall costs which allows me to reduce my premiums. So I would say have a talk to the TP insurer, find out what they are offering to give to you and if you like it then go for it. If you are not happy then tell them that you are not happy. I'm not quite sure what is meant by "not a hire car" - are they offering to just give you a replacement car to keep right away?

Paying for the course is not the same as a fine. Police offer the course as an alternative to a court conviction. If it wasn't taken to court then you cannot have received a conviction. If you were not fined and you received no points then you do not have to declare it, as there was no conviction. Being arrested is not the same as being charged, and being charged is not the same as being convicted. Of course you still have to declare the accident.

The only thing better than a police report in proving liability is an admission of liability. So yeah once the TP's insurers get a copy of the police report they will very likely accept liability (they might try something like an 80/20 split but hold out for 100%), and you'll be able to start getting the best treatment to help you.

On a slight tangent - did the agent calling you advise you to take out his policy over another one? He would have needed to have used words like "You should take out this insurance cover instead of Barclays because ....".